In this report Playback looks at the state of the union for editors, getting the opinion of tried and true talent on creativity, technology and where do they go from here? (See story this page.) We also talked to a couple of the growing shops, Productions Modulations (below) and Solar Audio (p. 32) to see how they’re functioning in a growing and changing field. And last but not least, we profile three up-and-comers who are making names for themselves early in the game. (See pages 24, 25 and 28.)

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Montreal: Eight distributors received $14 million from the Feature Film Distribution Fund’s principal fund in 1996/97, according to figures from Telefilm’s annual report which is slated to be released on Oct. 30 along with the agency’s three-year business plan.

The allocations are: Allegro Distribution ($1.3 million), Alliance Releasing ($2.6 million), Astral Films $700,000), Cineplex Odeon Films ($900,000), CFP Distribution ($2.7 million), Film Tonic ($700,000), Malofilm Distribution ($2.3 million) and Norstar ($2.6 million). Three other companies, Cinema Esperanca, Compagnie France Film and TSC Film Distribution, received a total of $369,000 from the Auxiliary Fund.

In 1996/97 production funding terms, eight French-track features with combined budgets of $22.6 million received $6.8 million from Telefilm’s Feature Film Fund, while 16 English-track movies with combined budgets of $66.7 million, a major increase in volume terms, received $12.5 million ($8.1 million in the previous year) from the fff. Fourteen other feature-length productions, five in French and nine in English, also received national funding support either through one or both of the ctcpf feature film envelopes.